it certainly is disturbing. once protocols the enforce legal behavior
are built into the fabric of our tools, we lose our ability to choose
right from wrong, and thus is lost a key aspect of our humanity. the
terms of this struggle are indeed quite grave.

in my view, this creates an urgent need for us (those of us who share
the belief that copyright overprotects intellectual property, acting
instead as a barrier to intellectual productiveness and creativity)
to come up with calm, rational (hopefully devastating) arguments in
favor of a freer exchange of information and ideas and against
artificially superimposed methods intent on constricting the easy
liquidity of human mental synthesis.

'i want free music' is not going to cut it, since it can be
characterized -- not unjustly -- as greedy and freeloading. 'once
it's out there, it's out there' is not persuasive, either, since it
calls for no ethical compunction whatsoever on the practitioners of
our craft.

there needs to be a platform built to support our position on the
free flow of ideas that protects it as much as possible against
arguments of theft and laziness, and protects it from beeing seen as
a ridiculous far-too far-out idea to be held in the mind long enough
for honest appraisal.

what are the planks in this platform? any ideas?

>Wow, this is really REALLY bad news. Apparently proposed
>modifications to the IDE and SCSI specifications will result
>in each hard drive manufactured encrypting its data with
>its own unique key. This means digital copying of
>copyrighted material will be stopped *at the hardware
>level*. (This will also, by the way, screw up existing
>backup software)
>
>If this goes through it will happen by NEXT
>SUMMER. All new hard drives will have built-in copy
>protection!
>
>Of course, it might not work, and someone will probably
>figure out how to hack it. but it's still scary...
>
>http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/15620.html>
>smh
Lloyd Dunn
The Tape-beatles -- P.O. Box 3326 -- Iowa City IA 52244 -- USA